The tungsten plastic sheets sometimes help me to render really heavy many flies for fishing deeply, in particular the Gammarus imitations, which I usually utilise on the fast rivers for tempting those trout that stay close to the bottom. The characteristic of similar sheets is the elasticity, which lets me to mould them in different shapes; I can reduce them, for example, in thin ropes which I can wrap directly on the hook shank, or in small tapes which I can tie on the thorax or on the abdomen of the fly. In accord with the use I make with them, sometimes I risk to compromise the resistance of the tapes: it happens if I finish the artificial making the ribbing directly over the small tungsten tape. For this reason, when I decide to build a Deep-Water Shrimp, I place over the back of the fly a piece of Magic Shrimp Foil, which prevents the ribbing to cut the tungsten tape. The Gammarus shrimps can assume various colours in agreement with the species they belong, or to the diet they follow, or also to the colours of their habitat. In the waters with the bottom covered by vegetation, these small crustaceans often tend to get an olive colour. Therefore, to allure the trout that feed on them, we have to select those imitations assembled with greenish and brownish materials.

INSTRUCTIONS

We start to tie ours fly, introducing the hook on the vice jay and wrapping along its shank a piece of fine lead, in a way to realise part of the ballast structure of the fly. Therefore we tie in the thread on the hook and we wrap it around the lead turns, so to make joint them very firmly to the hook

With the black thread, we stop a section of Magic Shrimp Foil and a piece of fine copper wire on a very low stretch of the hook bend

We wax a short section of the thread and we distribute on it a small quantity polypropylene dyed clear orange, followed by a tuff of light olive and finally by one more tuff of the same colour of leather, forming a compact and consisting rope. After that, we wrap the dubbing rope around the three rear quarters of the hook shank

Using a stretch of pale brown thread, we tie in, on the body rear edge, a piece of a small strip cut from a tungsten sheet, laying it down to cover the back of the nymph. The main function of this material is to increase the weight of the imitation

We push forward the Magic Shrimp Foil strip, placing it to cover the tungsten strip, and we fix both the materials over the hook portion lacking in dubbing

Turning in wide coils the copper wire around the fly body, we make the ribbing

We make free now the Magic Shrimp Foil and the tungsten strips from the thread turns and push their front edge backwards, stopping then the copper wire forward the body portion already prepared; we proceed therefore trimming away the pale brown thread from the fly body

Cut away the surplus of the copper wire, we wax a new section of the thread and we distribute on it a small quantity of ear’s mask fur, creating the dubbing that we will wrap around the fourth front of the hook shank, in order to complete the fly body

We push forward the tungsten and the Magic Shrimp Foil strips, laying them to cover the back of the last body section, and we fix them just behind the hook eye

We trim away the exceeding part of the ingredients used to form the back and we build the fly head with repeated thread turns, then we whip finish it

Our Deep-Water Shrimp is ready to be used in the next fishing trip, helping us to tempt a beautiful trout that is feeding near the bottom of a deep pool